


Reveille

by sister_coyote



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Backstory, Community: springkink, Dreams, M/M, Sexual Fantasy, Unrequited Love, one-sided
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-01
Updated: 2007-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:47:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_coyote/pseuds/sister_coyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hero-worshipping Captain fon Ronsenburg almost goes without saying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reveille

**Author's Note:**

> Mild spoilers for the beginning of the game.

It was a little bit humiliating to have to be shown how properly to hold a sword.  Reks and the other recruits had been given some training, but with the war effort so desperate . . .

"Your grip is too high," Captain fon Ronsenburg said.  "Lower.  There."

"I'm sorry, sir," Reks said.  "I never—"

The Captain cut him off.  "No reason you should have.  You're not—" and then he broke off, and said instead, "You're doing quite well."

Reks felt nearly as warm and flushed as the time he'd got into his parents' cellar and drunk half a bottle of mead.  "Thank you.  Sir.  Thank you, sir."

* * *

The first few nights, Reks was so exhausted from training and marching that he slept so deep he might as well have been drugged.  If he dreamed he did not remember those dreams.

The fourth night he dreamed, and remembered.

_Captain Basch's hand on his wrist, his shoulder—fingers in the dip of his collarbone, and then, in the logic of dreams, his mouth there, too.  His mouth strong and hot, lips not soft but rough, on the bone of his shoulder, the tendons leading to his neck, and he can feel his neck flutter as he swallows hard, again, again, disbelieving and in flight.  His heart beats against his ribs._

_The Captain turns him and kisses the hollow of his neck, the underside of his chin; Reks can feel his stubble burning and it makes his knees weak and his stomach turn over.  He is the one to seize the first kiss on Basch's mouth, to part his lips and press his tongue into Basch's mouth, warm and strong and wet.  He winds his hand into Basch's hair and tightens, and Basch's hands—big, rough, callused, purposeful—curl around his hip to hold him there, and Reks thinks he can feel Basch pressing hard against his thigh and —_

— reveille woke him hard and rubbing against himself.  He thought that he should stop, but he knew he did not have that kind of self-control.  The calluses on his own hands were not hard yet, but they were enough.  A little guiltily, but not very, he finished himself with the image of Basch burning behind his eyes, fair hair and a bright sword.

* * *

The first skirmish—Reks thought he knew what to expect.  True, there had been but little time to spare for training, yet still he did not expect the way his heartrate leapt, his vision contracted, his hands cold and shaking at first and then distant, as though not a part of him at all.  He could see only what was in front of him, could feel almost nothing; he stumbled, abraded his knees, knew it must hurt as they bled down his shins but could not feel it.

He did not feel anything until the end, when sense and sensation came crashing back all at once, and he reeled and shuddered and felt someone catch him at the last minute, before his head struck the stones.

* * *

_He dreams of dust and smoke and leather, the smell of scorched chocobo feathers on the air—and of running over cobbles slicked with blood. It would all be very much like the waking day that preceded it, save for the fact that the men he fights have the heads of beasts: wolves, rats, saurians, cockatrice.  They strike at him with swords; they lunge for him with foam on their fangs.  He fights back almost at random, and in the logic of the dream the world tilts beneath his feet and changes, so that he cannot keep the same formation from one moment to the next._

_He can smell the bitter tang of iron on the air, and turns with relief to hear the sound of his battalion coming to support him.  But they, too, are monster-headed, and though they fall to the enemy and leave him alone, it knots his gut and make shim flee, like a coward, like a deserter, into the night —_

_— and into rough familiar hands, his nose to armor he knows, and he is too afraid to look up to see the captain's face transfigured into a stupid animal maw.  The captain puts fingers under his chin, and forces him to look up, and Reks can see that his form at least is still human, though his eyes are replaced by the keen grey-yellow look of a wolf's._

_In the dream Reks lunges for him, as if he were the animal._

* * *

They made camp in the deserted and burned-out ruins of what looked like it had once been a flowershop.  Reks sat with his back against the counter, chewing a strip of checha jerky and examining his hard slab of journeybread.  It looked fit to break his teeth off.  He tried very hard not to think of the soft sourdough rolls and warm pockets of flatbread and dense, sour rye loaves that came out of Migelo's bakery.  Not ten feet away, the Captains were conversing quietly.

"City fighting," Captain fon Ronsenburg said.  "I am concerned for the recruits, in these circumstances."

"They need to learn to keep up sooner or later," said Captain Azelas—not unkindly, Reks thought, although firmly.

"We must go them here," Captain fon Ronsenburg said, and Reks could hear the whisper of a map unscrolling.  "Here, through this avenue—and there will be snipers on this building, mark my words."

"No doubt," said Captain Azelas.  "We will send a unit to take them out first."

Reks tried dunking his hard bread into his allotment of beer to soften it, which succeeded only in getting crumbs in the beer.

"Mm," Captain Azelas said.  "And then here, and here . . . "

He drifted, listening to the cadence of their voices.

* * *

_He dreams of city streets, the air flecked with bits of ash, and he dreams of Basch with his helm off.  In the dream he wants to tell him to put his helm back on—he could be struck by an enemy; he is leaving his guard down—but he does not.  Instead he crosses in the firelight and kisses Basch hard, feels the steel beneath his hands and then, in the logic of dreams, merely flesh.  There is fire; the street is burning.  He shudders._

_His hands push beneath what clothes Basch has, and feel skin and hard muscle, and all his hairs rise up on his body.  He looks up and Basch is looking down at him, helpless, his mouth shaping words Reks cannot hear or understand.  Reks does not need words.  He sinks to his knees._

_He feels no hands in his hair, but instead on his shoulders, on the back of his neck—firm, gentle, as guiding as those same hands were over his on the hilt of his sword.  Basch's . . . Basch's cock is hard, thick, wonderful: he does not know how he got Basch's pants open, but he is at peace with that uncertainty, at peace and more than at peace.  He leans forward to lick a salt drop from the tip, and then Basch is sliding into his mouth and he is moaning happy and hungry and longing._

_(he would not have imagined himself so shameless)_

_His hand is down his own pants and this time as he gets close he doesn't wake up; he sobs and shudders and then tastes bitterness on the back of his tongue.  Then his hand is being drawn inexorably from his pants, and Basch's hand replaces it.  He feels coarse skin and calluses and then he is coming, eyes closed, bright light behind his eyelids._

* * *

_"Didn't I tell you?" he says, later, much later._

_"We did not have much time for conversation."_

_He smiles.  "You always were what I wanted.  And what I wanted to be."_

_There is a long silence, and then: "I could not be more honored."_


End file.
